How Can Trans-Atlantic Business Minimize Impact on the Environment?
A Partnership Between B Corps in North America and Europe Demonstrates the Benefits of Collaboration
Celine Juppeau, Founder of Canadian B Corporation kotmo, and Alexis Krycève, Founder of French B Corp Gifts for Change, met back in 2018 to explore collaborations after an introduction made by a common client. At that time, Juppeau wanted to expand her business in France by producing sustainable promotional products for European clients there instead of sending them overseas. While this project was advancing slowly, COVID-19 hit and everything stopped.
Kotmo, Gifts for Change and Their Similar Industry Vision
Kotmo is a women-owned company founded in 2014 and based in Montreal, Canada. Kotmo designs, develops, and markets locally made personalized promotional products with its expertise in eco-design. The company offers promotional products that merge sustainability and design to meet companies’ responsible sourcing strategies
Gifts for Change, based in France, is a mission-driven company specializing since 2014 in the creation of sustainable promotional products, promoting social inclusion of workers with disabilities in its production. Gifts for Change imagined and popularized the concept of “Engagement Through Object,” a solution allowing companies to get involved in major causes through eco-responsible and supportive promotional products.
Together, they aspire to transform the promotional products industry through business practices that support a responsible and sustainable future. Last year they reconnected to explore new collaborations in this new world.
A Collaboration Based on Interdependence and Respect
The two companies share a unique force: creating sustainable products in their country that no other regular promotional product company can get. The two leaders realized that there was a need in their respective market for those kinds of products.
So they decided to explore a unique type of collaboration: What if each company accessed the original designs of the other without financial compensation, in order to produce and market certain items from their catalog in their respective territories?
Suddenly they can amplify their catalog, show new products to their clients, give more projects to their local manufacturers, and continue to be a leader and innovator in their industry.
This strategy is designed to amplify positive impact on society and the environment by reducing as much as possible carbon emissions linked to the export of products between North America and Europe.
Innovation and Commitment at the Heart of Collaboration
In accordance with their eco-responsible principles, kotmo and Gifts for Change commit to not exporting their products across the ocean. The first objects resulting from this partnership include a wooden medal that kotmo is adding to its catalog for Canadian and North American companies. The medal will be made with Canadian FSC wood and biodegradable lanyard at a manufacturer north of Quebec. The kotmo team decided to choose this product because they realized that there is so much waste in sport competitions with medals awarded that often are thrown away a couple months or years later. They wanted to provide a product that reduce environmental harm and landfill waste.
Gifts for Change, for its part, will inaugurate this collaboration by integrating vegetable felt glasses cases. This marks the addition of a new material to their collection that is sewn and assembled at a social enterprise in the north of France. Gifts for Change has a real interest in expanding its catalog so that official distributors find more and more opportunities to promote conscious and eco-friendly products. So far, the product range is mostly made of wooden and recycled paper-based objects, so this new material creates many possibilities.
The glasses case appeared as the best first product to launch in order to set and calibrate a new production line in the workshop. It remains simple to assemble, which is ideal to begin with as Gifts for Change has little experience in sewing. It is adapted to the sector of sports events, which is a strong focus for Gifts for Change, especially with the Olympics taking place in Paris this year. Moreover, it’s an ideal product for clients in the travel or entertainment sectors, which often are in search of promotional solutions in summer.
A Partnership to Increase Distribution of Ethical and Sustainable Promotional Products
This innovative partnership that opens a new path of cooperation for ethical and committed promotional products. With B Corp Certification, these two companies stand out for their high level of environmental and social commitments.
“By joining forces, we are proving that the interdependencies between B Corp companies can be a powerful lever for positive development,” Juppeau said.
The unique collaboration aims to promote the dissemination of their eco-responsible and supportive promotional products, and limit increases in carbon emissions, to help positively influence the promotional products market.
“This partnership perfectly illustrates how the search for a positive social and environmental impact can serve as a prism of innovation to build an economy that is moving in the right direction,” Kryceve says.
With this kind of initiative, kotmo and Gifts for Change open the path for new collaborations across the world — even with competitors.
B The Change gathers and shares the voices from within the movement of people using business as a force for good and the community of Certified B Corporations. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the nonprofit B Lab.
